Karl Markovics

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While preparing to film 'The Grand Budapest Hotel', director Wes Anderson and company scouted for locations, finding an abandoned shopping centre which they converted into the lobby of the hotel. The exterior of the hotel was primarily shot through the use of miniatures, as were certain action sequences from the film. The minute detail was continued into the creation of costumes for the extras, as each one was supposedly created to have their own entire backstory. Furthermore, the setting for 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' is the fictional Republic of Zubrowka. This, too, was created in detail, with various passports, newspapers and small businesses that were designed with a tremendous amount of detail.

Gustave may be aloof and snobbish in many ways, but he's also extremely charming with a good heart and a titanic personality. As result he makes for a highly popular concierge at the Grand Budapest Hotel, who regularly entertains guests in more ways than one. He is charged with training up an inexperienced young lobby boy named Zero Moustafa who he soon bonds with. When one of his one night stands, the elderly Madame D, is found murdered in her hotel room, Zero is first by his side to defend him against her family and the authorities who are quick to accuse Gustave of the crime. Things become more intense when her will reveals her wish to bestow a valuable painting to her lover, entitled Boy With Apple, and Gustave and Zero are forced to flee. However, they are not alone as Zero falls for an attractive guest named Agatha who helps them hide the painting while Gustave protests his innocence.

Charismatic but somewhat aloof concierge at the Grand Budapest Hotel, Gustave H, is less than impressed when a seemingly inexperienced new lobby boy named Zero Moustafa is hired for a trial period without his knowledge. However, the pair become thick as thieves when Gustave finds himself wanted by the authorities after the murder of his elderly one night stand Madame D. He does what any honourable hotelier would do under pressure. and runs. When it is discovered that the woman had left a priceless painting behind for Gustave in her will named Boy With Apple, her family is furious and Zero helps to the keep the painting hidden with the help of a charming young girl named Agatha as Gustave attempts to protest his innocence. With enough people despising Gustave for his often inappropriate professional conduct, it becomes harder than expected to clear his name and find out the truth about the death of Madame D.

Gustave H is a charismatic and over-friendly concierge at the Grand Budapest Hotel whose conduct has been far from professional over the course of his career, regularly engaging in one night stands with his deeply charmed guests including the elderly Madame D. So enamoured was Madame D about Gustave's interest in her, that she leaves him a priceless painting behind in her will named Boy With Apple. However, following her suspicious death, her maddened son Dmitri accuses Gustave of her murder and attempts to frame him for it, angered by his illicit involvement with her. Meanwhile, Gustave is attempting to train up an enthusiastic young lobby boy named Zero Moustafa who warms to him easily and helps to defend him as Gustave makes a break for it. Moustafa is also becoming very fond of a girl named Agatha, who he enlists to help hide the painting from Madame D's furious family.

Gustave H is a flamboyant and largely charismatic concierge at the Grand Budapest Hotel whose habit of getting a little too close to his guests and keeping them entertained at all hours has earned him legendary status among many of his peers. When he meets enthusiastic young lobby boy Zero Moustafa, Gustave trains him to be the best hotel worker he can and the pair become thick as thieves as they try and defend each other at all costs. When one of his more 'special' guests is found murdered, police accuse Gustave who does what any upstanding gentleman would do - runs. To the anger of the guest's son, he is bequeathed a valuable painting known as 'Boy With Apple' and now he finds himself on a cat and mouse chase with the victim's family and the police. Meanwhile, Zero meets the charming Agatha, who he's also desperate to protect as best he can.

'The Grand Budapest Hotel' is a heartwarming comedy about a very unusual friendship, directed and written by Wes Anderson ('Fantastic Mr. Fox', 'Rushmore', 'The Royal Tenenbaums'). It is based in 1920s Europe and truly reflects the glamour of the privileged in that decade. The movie is due to be released in the UK on February 28th 2014.

With elusive writing and directing, actor-turned-filmmaker Markovics inventively lets his story unfold with honest, natural pacing that quietly draws us in. It's a remarkably thoughtful, complex approach to an important subject.

Roman (Schubert) grew up as an orphan and has been in detention for the past four years. Now 19 and on day-release to find a job, his mentor (Liebmann) worries that he'll never be able to sustain a normal life. But it's the new job that begins to get to Roman: he's working for a company that transports human corpses. And as he starts to think about mortality, he decides to track down his birth mother (Kischka) to get some answers about who he really is.

When Dr. Martin Harris awakes in a hospital in Berlin after an almost fatal car crash which put him in a coma for four days; he finds himself alone, his wife was also in the car with him but she's nowhere to be found. Worried for her safety Harris sets out to find her but when he eventually does, she does not recognise him and a stranger has assumed his identity.

Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters opens on a beach in Monte Carlo where Salomon Sorowitsch (the great Karl Markovics) is sitting in a nice suit and a briefcase. Ten minutes later, Salomon walks into the swankest hotel in the gambling paradise and opens the case to reveal a king's bounty of crisp bills. You'd think the guy was James Bond's ragged older brother but, in truth, the guy has earned the right to be a ruthless money-spender.

Based on the true account of a group of Jewish counterfeiters that worked for the Nazis, Ruzowitzky casts Sorowitsch as the morally negligent foreman of a group of counterfeiters. Already an accomplished counterfeiter before being caught, Salomon (his friends call him Solly) gets put in job of the money counterfeiting operation by Herzog (an impressively whiny Devid Striesow), the commander of his current camp and the man who originally arrested Salomon.

Husky men in drag may be good for a sketch-comedy guffaw, but as the basis for an entire movie the idea always gets stretched way too thin.

It's the difference between "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," a good movie with authentic transvestites who happen to be fun and funny, and "To Wong Fu, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar," an inane movie built on nothing more than the incongruity of seeing Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo in flamboyant frocks. (OK, Leguizamo looked pretty damn good.)

But far worse than even "To Wong Fu" is "All the Queen's Men," in which decking out burly boys as "broads" is little more than a fatuous gimmick -- the kind of 25-words-or-less concept that is the basis of most bad movies: Wouldn't it be funny if a bunch of Allied soldiers went undercover as assembly-line women in a German factory during World War II?